In going through the mementos my parents kept, I’ve discovered another way in which my mother and I were alike. We both wrote poetry to our families as children.

Here’s a poem I wrote for Easter as a child. I can’t date it exactly, but because I referred to “grandmother” and not “grandparents”, I think I must have written it after my grandfather died and before my grandmother remarried—which would put it at Easter 1966 or 1967, when I was ten or eleven years old. The handwriting looks about right for me at ten or eleven. (Another clue is that I refer to only one brother, and my second brother was born when I was eleven and a half.)

I had no memory of writing this poem, but the handwriting is clearly mine, so I must own it.

Then I found a poem my mother wrote her mother for “her special day”. She dated her poem May 9, 1948—Mother’s Day of the year when she was fifteen. Her poem shows more maturity than mine did. (Her handwriting remained quite similar until the last couple years of her life, when she struggled to write anything.)

Neither poem is very good. In fact, both are quite dreadful.

But when I found them both on the same day, they made me laugh. Another example of how my mother and I were alike. Not only do the poems contain similar themes, but the pages are both decorated with flower borders, in typically young girl fashion.

The poems in Plume are about Ms. Flenniken’s childhood in Richland and her work experience at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where she spent a few years as a hydrologist and engineer. I deduce from Ms. Flenniken’s poetry that we are close in age, certainly part of the same generation. I had temporary jobs during college summers at Hanford, and my father worked there for most of his career. Her poems evoked many memories for me.

I most enjoyed the early poems in Plume, about Ms. Flenniken’s childhood years in Richland. I remember Cottonwood Drive, where she lived. As a toddler, I lived nearby – the first home I remember was a government-built duplex like the ones she describes. I remember the Columbia River, the Horse Heaven Hills, the sagebrush, and the sand. I remember the duck-and-cover drills.

The first poem in Plume isMy Earliest Memory Preserved in Film, about President Kennedy’s visit to Hanford on September 26, 1963. The poem’s first lines:

Somewhere in that sea of crisp white shirts I’m sitting on my father’s shoulders as you dedicate our new reactor and praise us . . .

I, too, was at that dedication of the N Reactor and saw President Kennedy. I was seven years old.

In that era, fathers dressed in suits, even for outdoor ceremonies on hot desert afternoons, so my father wore a dark suit. I don’t recall if he took off his jacket, but I’ll bet he was one of the “crisp white shirts.” I wore a sleeveless dress with a scratchy petticoat, white ankle socks, and my dress shoes. I don’t recall what my mother or brother wore.

As my father drove our family car in the long procession of cars from town out to Hanford for the event, we came alongside another vehicle in which my classmate Barbara rode. In the stop-and-go traffic, Barbara and I waved to each other as one car passed the other. Back and forth we went, in a two-lane parade, all headed for a temporary parking lot marked out in the desert dirt.

When we got to the sea of people that the poet describes, our family was way back in the crowd, and I was too short to see the speaker’s podium without a boost. So, like Ms. Flenniken, I saw President Kennedy from a perch on my father’s shoulders. I don’t remember what the President said, but I remember seeing him and the crowd from the safety of my father’s grasp.

And, like Ms. Flenniken, I remember the President’s death just a few weeks later.

My memories, so similar to hers.

Ms. Flenniken’s next poem is Rattlesnake Mountain, about a landmark near Hanford, which locals claim is the tallest mountain in the world without a tree.

Rattlesnake Mountain, from Wikipedia

As the story goes, soldiers stationed on Rattlesnake Mountain as part of the World War II defense of Hanford planted a tree during the war years, but it died. The 3,500-foot-high mountain is windswept, sand blown, and stark, covered with grasses and sage, but nothing else.

I remember a field trip to the observatory on Rattlesnake during my high school Physics class. The sound of the battering wind whipping our jackets around our torsos was louder than the teacher’s lecture. I don’t think the wind ever ceased at the mountain’s top.

And whenever we drove to Seattle, we passed Rattlesnake and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation to get to the Vernita Bridge to cross the Columbia River. The mountain rose, a solitary mound above the barren land, beyond the high fence that kept humans away from Hanford, though birds and jackrabbits got through with ease.

On one trip past Rattlesnake, my father told us about Enrico Fermi and others building the reactors at Hanford during World War II. “Why don’t they open a museum out here?” I asked, awed at the history he described.

“They can’t,” he said. “It’s hotter than a pancake.” That was when I first realized the extent of the nuclear contamination at Hanford.

I wrote on Monday about the tragedies of Alzheimer’s, which are real and heart-wrenching. But there are moments of humor as well.

Two of our family’s amusing stories occurred in May 2010, not long after my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Several family members had gathered in New Orleans for my daughter’s graduation from Tulane Law School. The day after we all arrived, my father announced that he needed to buy dress shoes.

“I’m the one with dementia,” my mother said, “but he’s the one who forgot to pack his shoes!”

A day or two later, after we had toured the National World War II Museum in New Orleans (which is well worth a visit), some of us were standing at a corner waiting to catch one of the famous streetcars back to our hotel. We waited and waited. No streetcar came. Then my mother pointed at a sign, “Look at that. It says the route is changed.”

And sure enough, because of a parade (there’s always a parade in New Orleans), the streetcar route had changed for the day. None of the rest of us had noticed the sign. We walked back to the hotel in the Louisiana heat and humidity.

A few months after our New Orleans trip, I wrote this poem:

Dementia

At first, she’s tense when traffic speeds,
An early sign she cannot cope.
We take her hand to cross the street,
It’s just her age and gait, we hope.

Then household chores become too hard,
The daily things she’s done for years.
Forgetfulness and gaffes increase,
And every failure leads to tears.

No longer parent, now she’s child,
Her brain regresses day by day.
Our lives flow on as her mind fades,
The shadows take her far away.

And when our hearts acknowledge loss,
Just as our grief begins to hit,
She smiles and utters a remark
Surprising us with her old wit.

Even now, there are moments when my mother remains who she has always been.

Last week, one of the activities in her assisted living facility was to fill out an NCAA bracket form. My mother has never been a big sports fan, though some other members of the family are. I doubt she has ever filled out an NCAA bracket before in her life.

She graduated from the University of Oregon. My father and two siblings have undergraduate degrees from the University of Washington, and my brother got his medical degree there also. My father’s graduate degrees are from Oregon State University. So we have some school rivalry between various members of the family.

Whenever anyone at home watched a game on television featuring the University of Oregon, my mother rooted for the Ducks. When she filled out her NCAA bracket last week, she showed the Ducks winning it all.

And you know what? Those Ducks have made it to the Sweet Sixteen – better than most of the teams my non-demented family members picked.

Like this:

As Christmas approaches every year, I worry about all the things to do — send cards, buy presents, mail packages, make travel plans. I feel overwhelmed.

Here is the poem I wrote a couple of years ago to express my frustration. It is in the classic villanelle rhyme scheme.

Jingle Bell VillanelleThe ads and frantic shopping never cease,Salvation Army Santa clangs his bell.I seek, I crave, I yearn for sacred peace.I make a list of ev’ry aunt and niece,And smile at clerks with merchandise to sell.For two whole months my shopping does not cease.Music blares of swans and laying geese,All twelve days of Christmas ring and swell.I hide my ears and yearn for sacred peace.The piles of presents steadily increase,But advertisements beckon and impelMe back to stores; my shopping does not cease.Advent waiting morphs into caprice.I wish I could audaciously rebelAgainst the frenzy stealing sacred peace.I need a quiet moment of release,Escape from season’s harried buying hell,But ads and frantic shopping never cease.I seek, I crave, I yearn for sacred peace.* * * * *